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Controversial coastal protection scheme gets underway at Selsey
Work on a controversial but exciting £16.8 million coastal protection scheme is about to begin on West Sands beach at Selsey – the first privately-funded project of its kind and size in the UK.
The project is being funded by Bunn Leisure, a privately-owned family business, which owns four holiday villages in Selsey, West Sussex. During the massive storms of 2008 more than 300 caravans closest to the beach were destroyed as Environment Agency (EA) sea defences failed.
Since then Bunn Leisure has been in negotiation with the EA and other authorities to protect its land and the family business which injects an estimated £60m into the local economy every year and
shingle making the beach larger and better for guests.
All four holiday villages and all the facilities will remain open throughout the works with day- to-day operations unaffected. The works are, in fact, anticipated to become an additional attraction. The beach is almost a mile long, so extensive areas will remain open for guests and all the shipments of rock and beach material will come in from the sea which will negate the need for what would amount to an amazing 36,000 or more lorry movements through the park and local areas.
From April, more than 93,000 tonnes of granite rocks will be brought in five huge shipments from the Larvik Quarry in Norway on a ship which will anchor about 1km off the West Sussex coast.
Managing director John Bunn and operations director Mike Caven
provides jobs for some 700 people. It soon became apparent that, although the EA were undertaking works all around them as part of the Medmerry Managed Realignment Scheme, Bunn
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Leisure would have to commission and pay for its own initiative if it was to survive.
“This represents an unprecedented investment for us, but we reached the point where we knew we had to do the work and protect the land, or close,“ said John Bunn, managing director of Bunn Leisure which has been awarded the title of Holiday Park of the Year for the past three consecutive years *.
“I’m just delighted that the works can now get underway and I can secure the future of my business. Around 2,000 families own holiday caravans at our four holiday villages and I felt that I had a responsibility to them.
“The works are going to be quite a spectacle so we’re building special viewing platforms as we believe visitors will come from far and wide to watch this amazing project take shape.“
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Two huge off-shore rock breakwaters, each with a two- acre footprint (that is two football pitches each), will be built on the seabed defending the land from the elements, creating nature havens for wildlife and protecting the coastline for decades to come.
Once the breakwaters are complete, the pebble and stone beach, which along with Bunn Leisure’s other facilities attracts more than 200,000 holidaymakers every year, will be bolstered with 500,000 tonnes of sand and
It will be met by a shallow barge which will collect the rocks, ranging in size from 0.3 to a whopping 10 tonnes each, and bring them ashore at high tides to stockpile locations on the beach. They will then be manoeuvered at low tides by diggers and excavators to form the breakwaters.
In the last stage of the work – which will finish in the autumn – the beach will be restored, replenished and enlarged when 500,000 tonnes of sand and shingle will be pumped from a dredger through a 750m peipeline on to the existing beach. This beachfront will then be 25m at its crest sloping gently down to the sea for as much as 100m – the perfect holiday playground.
Operations director Mike Caven said: “Families have many fond memories at our villages built up over more than five decades but sadly our Selsey coastline has been seriously eroded, neglected and damaged in recent years. We want to be sure we protect one of our greatest assets – this amazing beach – not only for today’s holidaymakers, but also for our guests of the future.
“We’re justifiably proud of our mile of beautiful clean coastline on the Solent and every year 200,000 happy visitors walk the shore, fish, swim, windsurf or simply play on the beach here. We now have the opportunity to make it even better.“
* Bunn Leisure has been Tourism South East’s Holiday Park of the Year for three years running in 2009, 2010 and 2011.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – APRIL 2012
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